Tap Into Your Inner Creativity with PhoFilter for iPhone

Price: Now Free with Version 1.54.244Rating:
PhoFilter: Written & Video iPhone App Review

Reviewed by Sarah Hanlon

From Instagram to Facebook, everyone loves sharing photos. Even more, people love to customize photos to add their own personal and artistic twist. If you’re looking for a photo filter app that goes above and beyond, read on!

If you love giving your photos extra attention as far as adding filters and other creative adjustments, PhoFilter is the perfect app for you. From basic touch ups such as color correction and contrast to adding text and timestamps, you’re only limited by your imagination.

One thing I was happy to see about PhoFilter is the fact that the app isn’t too difficult to learn and navigate. Simply import up to 30 photos to the app and choose which filters you’d like to apply to each individual photo. Filters can be “copy and pasted” using a “long touch” (ie, touching the photo for about 2 secs to bring up the copy or paste option) from photo to photo. In addition to that custom filters can be applied to all photos by using a “long touch” and selecting the option “Apply to All Images”. Then it will export all photos at once when you’re done editing, which does save quite a bit of time.

There is also a nice sharing facility for filters that are saved at custom filters. They can be shared through ‘FanFilter’ at Facebook. Just touch the share button of each custom filter to go to the ‘Share Filter’ page. The Home button at the bottom of the Facebook share page is where you can choose whether or not to expose your Facebook homepage. The default of the home button is off. You can choose to share at ‘FanFilter’ or on your own Facebook page.

While 171 individual filters might sound like an intimidating array of choices, I found many of the filters to vary only slightly from others. This wouldn’t be an issue if the ability to customize filters wasn’t available. I definitely would’ve liked to see more filters that pushed the creative envelope a bit by being bold and sharp instead of very soft and light. The developer states that more filters are coming and I look forward to seeing them.

Features:

PhoFilter iPhone App Review

As I mentioned before, PhoFilter includes 171 individual filters that can be applied to photos, and up to 12 filters can be applied to a single photo at once. You can even rearrange filter layers for even greater customization, which is a feature I was very glad to stumble on.

PhoFilter also offers many export and sharing options and certainly isn’t limited only to Instagram. You can upload photos to Facebook, Dropbox, and Twitter, along with other apps that allow photo importing on your iPhone.

However, there was one major aspect of PhoFilter that greatly disappointed me, and that’s the need to spend a total of $3.96 (four $0.99 filter packs) to unlock filters such as frames and text overlays. This means PhoFilter is essentially a $6 photo app. Personally I’ve seen free photo editing apps that offer these features without additional purchases. This is somewhat offset by the fact that, according to the developer, as new filters are added to the app they will be free to those who have already purchased the filters.

Value:

PhoFilter is available to download for $1.99 and comes with the optional in-app purchases mentioned above. If you’re looking for a great photo filter app with tons of customization options and you’re not weary of spending a bit more on an app, it’s definitely worth taking a look at.

PhoFilter – Filter for instagram is compatible with iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. Requires iOS 5.1 or later. This app is optimized for iPhone 5. A small expedite fee was paid to speed up the publication of this review.